Hebrews Lesson 105
NKJ Psalm 119:11 Your word I have hidden in my heart,
That I might not sin against You!
We are in Hebrews 7. Hebrews 7 is an argument for the superiority
of Christ’s high priesthood based on the fact that it follows the pattern of
the Melchizedekean priesthood that Melchizedek was a royal priest and it doesn’t
follow the pattern. (I use the word
pattern instead of order because it communicates I think a little better.) Order of Melchizedek is one of those words we
have been using a lot, but we tend to get - it becomes one of those words that
loses meaning the more you say it.
Now last week somebody asked
me the question, if the Melchizedekean high priesthood was eternal. I may have miscommunicated
on that in that I was talking about the fact that Christ as a Melchizedekean
priest is eternal because Christ is eternal, not because the Melchizedekean
priesthood is eternal. Of course
Melchizedek wasn’t eternal and any other examples of royal priest-king in the
Old Testament were human. They weren’t
eternal. But the point that is being
driven home by the writer of Hebrews is that there is a change of priesthood. That means there’s a change of law. A change of law indicates a change of
covenant. Everything is structured according
to these legal documents. The change of
priesthood is from one that is based on the Mosaic Law after the pattern of the
flesh to one that is based on the order of Melchizedek. It’s an eternal high priesthood. The emphasis here is on eternal.
So I’ve got 10 points of
summary. Now I went through 8 of them –
or 9 of them last week so you should have them.
If you weren’t here, you will frustrate yourself trying to write them
down because I simply want to breeze through them so that we get context for
where we are in verses 23 to 25. So I
just try to alleviate a little frustration.
As always, somebody who comes in that wasn’t here the week before and
when you are doing a serial study like this, they feel like they are a little
bit out of place.
So we come down to verse 15
and I retranslated it last week to give it a little more clarity that it should
read:
It (that is the principle of a change in the priesthood
and Jesus’ higher status as covered in the previous verses( 12, 13, and 14)) is
even made.
The even there is an
ascensive kai. It is not “yet it
is far more evident”; it is “even made exceedingly even more evident”. It’s a strong superlative here.
Literal translation: It is even
made exceedingly more evident since another priest according the order of
Melchizedek is arisen.
That got it right.
It is even made exceedingly
more evident since another priest according the order of Melchizedek is arisen.
That has a perfective sense
of the present tense there. It is
something that arose in the past and has ongoing efficacy.
NKJ Psalm 110:4 The LORD has sworn And will not
relent, "You are a priest forever According to the order of
Melchizedek."
That’s
the emphasis, that word “forever”. He is
going to quote this again and quote the whole verse in verse 21, but here he is
just quoting the two stanzas so he can pull in and emphasize that one word “forever”. He is not emphasizing anything else in the
quote, just the “forever” aspect that it makes it a superior priesthood. Then he will develop that in the next couple
of verses. Verses 18 and 19 continue the
idea that the Law made nothing perfect and therefore there is a need to have a
better hope.
Now that’s kind of where we
stopped last time so let me pause on this a minute. The point that is being made when we get down
to verses 20 and 21 down to 22 is the idea that this is based on an oath and
there was no oath sworn by God in relation to the Levitical priesthood. This idea of an oath brings in a certainty or
legality to the establishment of this priesthood that goes beyond that of the
Mosaic Covenant. It takes this
priesthood to a higher level. His
argument in verse 20 is:
NKJ Hebrews
Then there is a parenthetical
in verse 21 with a quote from Psalm 110 and the thought is picked up in verse
22.
It should read:
In
as much as He was not made a priest without an oath.
Then verse 22.
NKJ Hebrews
Now set aside verse 21 for a
second because that is a quote from Psalm 110:4 again to support his point from
the Old Testament.
Now the word translated
surety is the Greek word enguos. I meant to transliterate that. It should be engous.
A double gamma is always pronounced like an “ng” just
like angel is really aggel. But the gamma comes across as an “ng”. So it is enguos. This
means surety. It has the idea of a
person who takes responsibility for the payment of another’s debt or a pledge deposited
as a security against loss or damage.
Let me comment on that. The first
idea – this word is only used one time in the entire New Testament. It’s common in extra-biblical documents. In the first meaning it would relate to substitutionary
atonement, the idea of a person who takes the responsibility for the payment of
another person’s debt. But that’s not
the context here. So he’s not talking
about Christ being our surety at the cross.
He’s talking His being our surety as our High Priest and His ongoing
intercessory ministry as our High Priest.
The second idea of enguos is that of a pledge deposited as a security
against loss or damage. It’s like the
security deposit you make when you go rent a place. You put up usually a months rent or two
months rent as a security deposit in case or to hold the place until you can
move in, to take care of any damage that may incur. As long as that security deposit is made,
that’s yours. That is a legally binding
thing. That’s the point that he is
making – Jesus has become our security in an ongoing security deposit of a
better covenant.
Now as soon as you translate
it in the sense of a security deposit, the key word there is security. As long as He is our security deposit, then
whatever transactions occur on our behalf are as long lasting as His security
deposit which means that salvation can’t be lost. It is a great argument for eternal security
that He is our surety.
Now in verse …as we go
forward into verse 23 he brings in another point. That is also related to eternality.
NKJ Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
The key interpretive words here
in these two verses are “death” and “forever”, the contrast between the temporal
nature of all human priests. Sooner or
later they have to die so there has to be a whole bunch of them.
That word that is translated unchangeable
is the Greek word aparabatos. Now there are three parts to this word. There is the alpha privative at the beginning,
that first letter “a” which is like our “un”.
It’s a negative, “un”. And then parabatos – you have para
which means something going beyond. It’s
a preposition attached root batos. It has to do with something that you are not
able to go beyond. You can’t go beyond
this point. It comes to mean something
that is unsurpassable or that which is the final or ultimate expression of
something. So what the writer of Hebrews
is saying:
But
He (that is Jesus Christ) because He continues forever…
So he picks up that whole
theme of “He is a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” that He
is the final priesthood. He is that unsurpassable
priesthood. You could never have anything
that would go beyond that. He is the
final expression of a priesthood because He is the only one who is
eternal. He is the foundation of the
statement.
Now I want you to take a look
at verse 24 a minute.
NKJ Hebrews
So you have a causal
statement there. And then you are going
to have a proposition stated.
But when you get to verse 25 you
are going to draw another conclusion from the causal clause. Because He continues forever, first of all He
has an unchangeable priesthood. Second
we can draw the conclusion that because He continues forever...
NKJ Hebrews
Eternality.
…to make intercession for them.
So, verse 25 is built on the doctrine
of the eternality of the Second Person of the Trinity, the eternality of Jesus Christ. Because He continues forever (because He is eternal),
He is able to save to the most complete way, the fullest way those who come to God
through Him since He always lives (eternality) to make intercession for them.
So this whole passage drips
with eternality. The point is that because
Jesus is eternal, because His high priestly ministry is eternal, anything He
does toward us in relation to His eternal high priestly ministry is
eternal. So when He saves you; He saves you
eternally, not conditionally. When He
saves you, it is not with a caveat attached that I will save you as long as you’re
obedient. It is totally based upon
Him. When we look at the verb, the verb
has as its subject the one who performs the action of the verb - He is able to
save. The one who performs the action is
Christ, not us. He saves us; we don’t
save ourselves. The most important thing
you can understand in salvation is that you don’t contribute one thing to your
salvation or your security – not one thing.
That’s what grace is. Jesus does everything
and we don’t do anything – not one thing.
It’s totally dependent upon Him and His power and His will.
Now let’s look at a couple of
terms that are here. If you are using a
New American Standard (I don’t know what the NIV says but), the New American
Standard says:
NAS Hebrews
Sounds good, doesn’t it? But it’s confusing because in James 4 the
concept of drawing near to God (Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.)
is a fellowship verse, not a salvation verse.
It’s a totally different word.
The word in James is not the word that we find here in Hebrews
7:25. What we have here is the simple
word proserchomai. Pros is the preposition prefix, erchomai simply means to come. It’s translated “to come” many, many times
through Scripture - that those who come to God through Him is simply a statement
of salvation.
Jesus said:
NKJ Matthew
There it is erchomai, not
proserchomai.
Coming to God is another
synonym for trusting Christ as your Savior because that is the way we come to
God.
So in verse 25 when we read:
NKJ Hebrews
Those who come to God are
those who believe that Christ died on the cross for their sins.
Now what does it mean that He
is able to save them to the uttermost? That
is the Greek word panteles. Now the pan means all or every. It’s the word that encompasses
everything. Teles
comes from our familiar word teliao, telos and it has to do with complete. It has the idea of “with all
completeness.” So He is able to save completely
or utterly or to the fullest extent. He
is the one who is able to do all of the work related to salvation.
through
Him,.
Again we have the statement
that echoes what Jesus said.
NKJ John 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the
way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
Same grammatical construction,
dia plus the genitive. So the statement here is a very strong
statement that God is the one who saves us the uttermost.
since He
always lives to make intercession for them
It connects that ongoing
salvation (that security) with His intercessory ministry. His keeping us is part of His high
ministry. That’s what He prays in His
high priestly prayer. So this is a very
strong verse and a very important verse for understanding the Doctrine of Eternal
Security.
Now this is a doctrine that
so many people are getting confused about today because you have a lot of
historical confusion and today you have a lot of confusion because nobody wants
to teach the Bible anymore.
So I thought it was important
to go over the Doctrine of Eternal Security and I have added a few things and
tweaked a few things to try to deal with some of the things that are going on
today and answer some questions that I’ve had.
It’s amazing. I’ve had several
questions from people coming from the direction of how do I deal with Lordship
salvation, the Lordship concept of perseverance. I’ve had people ask me. They are talking to somebody and this comes
up. I know of one person who doesn’t
live locally (lives in another part of the country) has been going around from
church to church for a number months trying to find a church where they can at
least find a level of comfort zone so the kids can go to Sunday school. It always gets twisted up on this. If you don’t understand the theological
nuances...
This one guy was telling
me…he said it was almost like playing a word game with the pastor.
“You come up and ask them, ‘Do
you believe this?’, and they try to do everything but tell you what they really
believe so that you’ll still come to their church.”
You have to sort of
understand the jargon or the code words to know what to listen to or you will
be suckered right into some congregation.
You are going to think it sounds right, but it really isn’t. So let’s go through the Doctrine of Eternal Security. First, let’s define it.
Doctrine of Eternal
Security
To say that you can lose your
salvation isn’t simply a matter of saying, “Well, he was going to go to heaven and
now he’s not.”
That is such an over
simplification. To lose your salvation means
you have to be un-baptized by the Spirit.
You have to become unregenerate.
You have to lose that imputed righteousness. All of these different things have to be
reversed so that you can then lose your salvation. It’s a real failure to deal honestly with the
complexity of what God does for us at the instant of salvation. So the first part of the definition is that
it’s the work of God toward the believer at the instant of faith alone in
Christ alone which guarantees that God’s free gift of salvation is eternal and
cannot be lost, terminated, abrogated,
nullified, or reversed by any thought, act or change of belief in the person
saved. You can’t get saved one day and
truly understand the gospel that Christ died for you and you trust Him, You can’t believe it one day and disbelieve
it the next day and lose your salvation.
Salvation is not based on what you do after you are saved. It’s based on that point where you put your faith
alone in Christ alone. It’s so simple,
but it is such a battlefield today.
You may not realize this and
if you are not engaged in trying to witness to people or even trying to have a conversation
about what you believe with other Christians, then when I start talking about
things like this and doing this comparison and contrast with these other belief
systems, then you are going to be totally lost.
That’s because you are living a spiritual life on an island which
frankly is not a biblical spiritual life.
We have to be engaged, witnessing to unbelievers and encouraging believers.
So anytime you start opening
your mouth about what you believe as a Christian to anybody else, they’re going
to immediately say, “Well, I heard this or I believe this.”
And now all of a sudden you
are put in a place where you have to articulate what you believe and why you
believe it.
The next thing you know you
are going to come along and somebody will say “Well, I have been reading this
book by this author and he says this and I really like that and that makes
sense to me.”
You are going to say, “Wait a
minute. Let’s go to the Bible.”
Oops. Where are my notes? Where is that Scripture verse? What did Robby say?
Somebody commented on this to
me the other day and said, “I went back over my notes and I realized if I just
knew everything in my notes I would be really smart.”
But, we are all that
way. It just takes time. When I say that it’s not to ridicule or get
down on anybody. I am just as much at
fault on that as the next person. I
don’t think that quickly on my feet.
Usually somebody says, “Well,
what about this?”
I think, “Hum.”
On the way home I have a good
answer.
I know you can all relate to
that.
Let me break this down in a
slightly different way. When a person
trusts in Christ for salvation God permanently justifies and regenerates and
gives eternal life. This cannot be lost,
no matter what that person does or does not do from that instant on until the
day he dies.
Let me comment on this
because each one of these clauses can be challenged and attacked and changed
and misinterpreted by any number of people as they say, “What do you mean by
belief? What do you mean by trust?”
A person can (according to
some people can) believe in Christ and it’s not a saving faith.
“What do you mean by salvation? What do you mean by justification?”
Most people today –you would be amazed. I had the opportunity in the past few days to
spend some time with my pastor-friends.
I won’t mention them. Yeah, I
will. Bruce was over hear the other day,
David Dunn. We have a great time
together. Igor was over here. Chris was back here. Ike was over here last week. We were having a gripe session about how hard
it is trying to teach (and this doesn’t relate to either of our congregations),
but it relates to other teaching environments that we have Christians who are
so biblically ignorant – profoundly, abysmally ignorant of the Scripture and
basic doctrine and don’t seem to care a wit that they are. In fact I experienced this some when I was
teaching at the
The stories I get from the
few people that we have that are going to seminary is that the seminary students
are so postmodern that if they in conversation say, “Well, maybe the Bible
actually says X.”
“Well, how can you say that? I would mean that I am wrong and I am
offended.”
It is difficult for them to
even have a conversation with other students because everybody wants to think
that whatever they generate out of the idolatry of their own naval is absolute
truth. It’s incredible. It’s so great to have a congregation like
this. It makes you want to fall down on
your knees every night to thank God for it because people want to know the
Bible. But most people out there want a
band aid. They want something that makes
them feel like they have done something for God. And, that’s it. And if you don’t validate that, then you are
right out of the pit of hell. You are judgmental
and arrogant and terrible. So it’s
really hard to have these discussions, but you have to know what is going
on.
When a person trusts in
Christ, faith doesn’t mean faithfulness.
John MacArthur tried to do that in his first edition of the Gospel According
to Jesus. He tried to say that pistis in Ephesians 2:8-9…
NKJ Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved
through faith,
…should be understood as
faithfulness.
For by grace you have been
saved through faithfulness.
Let’s go see the pope. That’s Roman Catholic theology. You are saved by your faithfulness. You’re not saved by the object of faith in Jesus
Christ. You are saved by
faithfulness.
So I say when a person trusts
in Christ, by trust we mean to rely on, to believe in. That’s how the Apostle John expresses it in
the Gospel of John again and again and again - to believe in Christ, to accept as
Savior, to accept what He did on your behalf.
That’s the imagery of Jesus bread of life.
NKJ John
It is accepting Him and all
that He is and does into us - accepting it into our lives. Those are just different ways of expressing this
concept of completely and exclusively relying upon Jesus. That means that you are not going to trust in
Christ and get any soteriological benefit from going to church or from participating
in the sacraments. It’s faith
alone. You’re not helping it or
strengthening it any by doing anything else.
It’s only believing that Jesus died for you. The object of faith is what has the
value. It’s not the kind of faith
because faith is faith.
If you talk to anybody coming
out of a Calvinistic position that holds to a Lordship view of perseverance, they
see faith as a gift. They see faith as a
gift.
Hold you place here in
Hebrews and turn over to Ephesians 2.
I think I covered this last
week. I don’t know which night. I did a lot of teaching on this section 1
through 10 when I was at the WHW Conference out in
The grammatical subject of that
sentence doesn’t occur until verse 4 - God.
You can circle that. That’s your
grammatical subject. That means that
everything that is said up to that point is secondary to the main idea of this
sentence. The main idea of the sentence
is expressed in the independent clause of the sentence which is composed of
your grammatical subject and your verbs.
You have three verbs that explain the action of God. God performs the action. The three verbs begin in the second part of
verse 5.
NKJ Ephesians 2:5 even when we were dead in
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
That’s regeneration.
NKJ Ephesians 2:6 and raised us up together,
and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
Those are the three
verbs. So you have one subject, God, who
does three things. He makes us alive
together, raises us together, and sits us together – three things He does.
Now if I were to ask you to
give me one word that would summarize the work that Christ did in making us
alive together, raising us up together, and sitting us together with Christ
what would that one word be? What would
that one word be? Tom, have you got
it? What would that one word be? The first one is regeneration. I want you to
think about this. That’s why I am asking
you this question. It is kind of unusual
in Bible class. He made us alive
together. That’s regeneration. He raised us together and seated us. He made us alive and raised and seated
us. What one word covers those three
things? He saved us. He saved us.
That’s why you have this almost an expletive at the end of verse 5. See He summarizes these three verbs in the
one verb - you have been saved.
NKJ Ephesians 2:5 even when we were dead in
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
That is the statement that’s
made in the middle of these three verses that is grammatically unrelated to the
rest of this sentence from 1 to 7. Why
is that important?
This is one of the great
examples I use to show why grammar really matters. Why is that important? Do you see that phrase “for by grace you have
been saved” any where else. Where do you
see it? Verse 8. That’s right.
What happens in verse 8 is he is using that phrase “for by grace you
have been saved” to summarize everything he said in 1 through 7. He is taking all that content in 1 through 7 and
he scrunched it down to one phrase, “for by grace you have been saved through
faith.”
He adds the idea in verse 8 that
it’s through faith. All of this that God
does for you in verses 5, 6 and 7 is done is through faith.
Then you have the phrase “and
that.” Now the interesting thing in the
Greek is that the “that” is a neuter in the Greek. It’s a neuter pronoun. A neuter pronoun has to refer to – easy
question. See, I am being so
Aristotelian tonight - so Socratic. A neuter
pronoun has to refer to:
A, B, or C? C.
Well, grace is a feminine
noun and faith is a feminine noun. So
the “that” can’t refer to faith or grace.
It’s not the faith that’s the gift which is what every Calvinist will
tell you. It is what God did for you in
2, 5, 6, and 7. The fact that He made
you alive together, raised you together, and seated you together - that is the
gift of God. That whole salvation
package is the gift of God, not the faith.
But see when the faith that saves you is a different kind of faith, then
you can have a non-saving faith in Jesus.
So if you can believe in Jesus and it’s not salvific (It won’t save you.)
and you can have a faith in Jesus that can save you, how does a person over here
distinguish his non-saving faith in Jesus from the person over here that has
saving faith in Jesus? What’s the
difference going to be? Because the
person over here is not going to have works consistent with his faith. This person is going to have works consistent
with their faith. So the only way you know
if you really believed in Jesus is you have works that are consistent with your
faith.
So how do you know if you are
saved? Works. It’s legalism; but it’s a works that is
brought in the backdoor, not brought in the front door. So that is why I have this statement
here.
When a person trusts in Christ
for salvation then God does the work. He
permanently justifies, regenerates and gives eternal life. I couldn’t put everything in there, but I
thought those three things summarize it. He justifies. That means imputes righteousness and declares
you just. He regenerates. You get a new human spirit. You are born again and you are given eternal
life. This cannot be lost no matter what
you do or don’t do. Now that’s really
important because what happens is that in 90% of Christianity people say that what
you do or don’t do after you trust in Christ is either going to cause you on
the one hand to lose your salvation if you were saved or it’s going to prove
whether you had the right kind of faith – if it was the non-saving faith or
saving faith. This salvation cannot be
lost no matter what that person does or does not do from that instant on until
the day he dies.
Now the two schools of
theology that you have to understand here are on the one hand Calvinism and on
the other hand Arminianism. Calvinism is
the theology that is developed from the followers of John Calvin. It is not necessarily everything Calvin
believed, but it is what is basically calcified into his theology by the end of
the 16th century.
A man by the name of James
Arminius (or Jacobus Arminius whether you want to use
the Latin or the English form) comes along and he actually believed in eternal
security. But his followers solidified
his theology and you had this huge theological confrontation that occurred in
the Senate of Dort in
TULIP is for total depravity,
but they actually mean total inability. You
can’t even exercise neutral positive volition to God. You can’t do anything. God does everything. He even gives you positive volition. So you have total inability.
The U is for unconditional
election that God doesn’t base His choice on who will be saved and who won’t on
any condition. He just chooses.
“You, you and you will be
saved and the rest of you won’t.”
In the more extreme forms, you
get a double predestination where “you four are predestined to heaven and the
rest of you are predestined to hell.”
But not every Calvinist holds
to double predestination. But it is sort
of a passive double predestination.
The L stands for limited
atonement. See, if God chose who would
be saved, then that’s set in concrete so Jesus doesn’t need to die for those
who aren’t chosen. So He only dies for
those who are chosen.
They’ll say terms like, “Well,
if you believe Jesus died for the unsaved, then He just spilled His blood on
the cross.”
Like it’s an accident.
The I is irresistible grace
or sometimes efficacious grace. (This
will confuse everybody here. I have re-educate
every young guy that goes to seminary.) Efficacious grace doesn’t mean in its
historical theological context as almost every theologian has ever used it - efficacious
grace does not mean that the Holy Spirit makes your faith efficacious for
salvation. Efficacious grace means that
the Holy Spirit is going to give you the grace you need to be saved because you’re
the elect. It’s a Calvinistic term. Some of you had it redefined for you which is
not really kosher. The term historically
by every theologian for the last 500 years has meant that the Holy Spirit is
going to irresistibly give you grace.
You can’t say no. He is going to
give you the grace you need to trust Christ as savior because He is going to
give you the faith also. That’s historic
Calvinism.
P is perseverance. Perseverance isn’t - although some like Louis
Sperry Chafer held to a non-lordship perseverance where for him perseverance of
the saints was the perseverance of Christ.
But for most Calvinist and reformed theologians the P stands for the
perseverance of the saints. What it
really means is that you persevere in good works so that you know that you’re
saved. If you don’t persevere in good
works, then you didn’t have the right kind of faith. You didn’t have efficacious grace and you
just had a non-saving faith in Jesus. So
that’s how they define it.
Now let’s look at a couple of
historical documents so we understand this.
This is the Westminster Confession of Faith written in the early 1600’s
by the so-called Westminster Divines, the Westminster Theologians which captures
English Presbyterian theology. In the
Westminster Confession of Faith it states (Notice the grammatical subject
here. It’s really important.):
They
whom God hath accepted in his Beloved, effectually called…
See I told you – efficacious
grace was terminology that meant the Holy Spirit irresistibly draws you to the
cross. There’s the term.
…and
sanctified by His Spirit can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state
of grace,
Now what that is saying is if
you were really saved, two days later deny Christ and go into carnality for the
rest of your life and die in a cesspool of sin.
You can’t do it – not if you were really saved. You may commit egregious sins as a believer. You may have periods of carnality. But you’re not going to stay there with the
pigs and the prodigal son until the day you die – not if you were really saved.
So what are they saying? If you are really saved, you’ve got to have
works consistent with your salvation.
but
shall certainly persevere therein to the end and be eternally saved.
Notice that – they will
certainly persevere. Who performs the
action of “certainly persevere”? The
“they”, the believer, not God.
Now Louis Berkhof
well-known reformed theologian (We had to read his Systematic Theology
– parts of it when I was in seminary.
Very good, very reformed. Good in
some parts.) says:
The
doctrine of perseverance requires careful statement especially in view of the
fact that the term perseverance of the saints is liable to
misunderstanding. We should guard
against the possible misunderstanding that this perseverance is regarded as an
inherent property of the believer or as a continuous activity of man by means
of which he perseveres in the way of salvation.
See he recognizes the danger
there that it’s not – you can’t articulate it as man being the one who
works.
However, Charles Hodge who
was a great reformed 19th century theologian wrote in his commentary
on I Corinthians 9:27 regarding the Apostle Paul that:
This
devoted apostle considered himself as engaged in a life struggle of his
salvation.
Huh? Can you picture Paul waking every day struggling
to make sure he was saved? That was
Charles Hodge not to be confused with Zane Hodges. Okay, that was Charles Hodge, 19th
century Princetonian theologian.
His son A. A. Hodge named for
the man who founded the
Perseverance
and holiness therefore in opposition to all weakness and temptations is the
only sure evidence of the genuineness of past experience of the validity of our
confidence as to our future salvation.
In other words the only way
you can know is by your experience of good works, not by the promise of
God. See that’s the difference. Is God’s promise good enough or - I don’t look
to the Bible I look to fruit? I have to
become a fruit inspector rather than relying on the promise of God.
On the other end of the
spectrum you have an Arminian like Robert Shank who says:
There
is no saving faith apart from obedience.
There is no valid assurance of election and final salvation for any man apart
from deliberate perseverance and faith.
See how close that sounds to
what the Calvinist says? Now the way
most people think of this is that Calvinism and Arminianism are on opposite
ends of the spectrum. It’s a
misconception. They think that
Arminianism and Calvinism are complete opposites.
But it is really more like
this. There is just a little bit of
distance between them because the Arminian is putting works up front and the Lordship
Calvinist is putting in the backdoor.
The Arminian says there is no eternal security and the Lordship
Calvinist says there is eternal security but you can’t really know you are
saved if you don’t have works. They are
both introducing works into the equation.
But Scripture says it’s not
on the basis of works either before or after salvation. And so in neither of these systems can you
really know if you are saved. Now where
it gets tricky is you will go up and you’ll ask somebody - let’s say you are
out there in the rest of the country, the world somewhere, and you are trying
to look for a church somewhere and you say, “Do you believe in eternal
security?”
The pastor says, “Yes. I believe once saved, always saved.”
But what he didn’t tell you
is that he doesn’t know if you can know if you were once saved. He doesn’t know how you can know you were sure
you were once saved.
I remember asking John MacArthur
one time when he was speaking at a bookstore in
Tommie Ice and I were sitting right in front
of him and I raised my hand and I said, “Well Dr. MacArthur, are you sure that
you are saved?”
“Well, only 99% sure.”
See even he couldn’t be 100%
sure that he was going to heaven when he died because there was a possibility
at least that he faith he had in Jesus was a non-saving faith. There might come a time when he might reject
Christ and fall into sin for the rest of his life and then he would have proved
that it was a false faith. It was a
pseudo-faith, a pseudo-salvation. So
that sort of sets it up. This is the
battle and what we have in the middle as the alternative to this is the
movement that really (not that the theology wasn’t there before because it was),
but it became crystallized in the midst of this theological debate that began
to develop in the 60’s and 70’s. It
became known as the Free Grace Movement.
That was really a product, a lot of the writings of Zane Hodges, a
professor at Dallas Seminary who was my first year Greek professor and some of
the books that he wrote. He wrote a
great book called The Gospel Under Siege.
There was another well-known
beloved professor at Dallas Seminary named as S. Louis Johnson. S. Louis Johnson was Pastor Thieme’s Greek
professor when he was in seminary. So a
lot of guys who came up out of that background went up to seminary and they had
this pre-suppositional trust in Dr. Johnson.
Within three months they were 5 point Calvinists because they were told
that they could trust Johnson.
Wrong. So Johnson became a 5
point Calvinist. At least he had the integrity
to realize that he wasn’t in step with the seminary so he retired from being a
professor at the seminary. But he did - I remember when he and Zane Hodges had a
debate at a brown bag luncheon at Dallas Seminary back in the 80’s and he re-punctuated
the title of Zane’s book. He said he was
here to review a book The Gospel - Under
Siege by Zane Hodges.
So they had a lot of fun with
that of course were very good friends.
Back in those days we were all gentlemen at Dallas Seminary. But this has been a battle and now what’s happened
and some of you are aware of this and others of you are not, but even within
the Grace Evangelical Society there has developed within this a new kind of
twist that there are saying (and Zane is one of them. I think he is completely
off on this.) that the gospel content is just accepting, believing that Jesus
will give you eternal life.
What’s not there? This has
become a major battle. It has affected us at Chafer Seminary. They had a big conference in
In I Thessalonians
NKJ 1 Thessalonians
For if we believe that Jesus gave us eternal life God
will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.
Is that what it says? It’s not what it says.
NKJ 1 Thessalonians
Paul said:
NKJ 1 Corinthians 2:2 For I determined not to know
anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
See what’s happening now is
we are getting people in the free grace camp who have and the terminology has
been developed by others have a crossless
gospel. As long as you are trusting
Jesus to save you, you don’t have to believe in the deity of Christ or His
substitutionary atonement. You just
believe that He is going to give you eternal life and that’s enough. This is going to be a major issue. The sad thing is what we are seeing is in the
last 30 years. We have seen 50 at least,
maybe a 100 new theological positions develop fragmenting evangelicalism,
splitting churches that didn’t even exist when I was back in seminary back in
the 70’s.
Everybody is battling each
other and nobody is having any impact and everybody is out there saying. “Well
there are 50 positions and I can’t think them through so let’s just come
together at church, light a few candles, sit on our sofas, hold hands and sing Kumbaya and…”
“The only thing we have in common
is experience. We have all had some
experience with Jesus, but let’s not put it in words because if we put it in
words we will start fighting with each other so the only thing we can do is
have a unity of experience.”
But Paul said in Ephesians 4
that it is the unity of faith the body of doctrine and doctrine is worth
splitting over because there is truth and there is falsehood. God didn’t
communicate to create a fog between our ears.
He communicated to give clarity between our ears so we can know what God
says.
So next time we’ll come back
and having introduced what the issues are in relation to eternal security we
will go through the various passages related to security because what we see in
Hebrews 7 is that the intercessory ministry of Jesus Christ is based on His
divine characteristic of eternality. It
is because we have an eternal High Priest, He can secure our salvation
eternally.